Wednesday April 27th

Me, Jane and Mathew in the Summer Palace

The Summer Palace

This morning we had breakfast and departed a little later at 8:45am.  Our first stop was the Summer Palace (real name: Heavenly Gardens).  Joy told us that the Summer Palace was four times as big as the Forbidden City!!  Although it was spacious, it was totally different to the Forbidden City, with being mostly gardens.  We walked through at a very relaxed pace, which I have to say was quite nice, especially on a day like today –blue sky and sunshine, apparently rare to see in Beijing!  It was like walking through a huge garden, and it was a really nice place.  It served the Qing Dynasty as an imperial retreat from the Forbidden City.  It has been rebuilt twice however, once after the French and English destroyed it in 1860, and again in 1902 after the Boxer Rebellion.

Birds Nest Stadium, Beijing

After lunch, we had a quick look at the Birds Nest Stadium and Water cube in the Olympic village before heading on to the Hutong tour which was great fun, as we rode around on rickshaws!  We stopped off at a Hutong in which people were actually living, but allowed tourists in to see.  The owner (through our guide) told us the history of the house and how it had passed down to her.  Hutongs are Beijing’s courtyard houses, and were formerly the homes of officials and the well-to-do.  Many were taken over by the state but they are now increasingly privately owned.

Rickshaw riding!

During our time in one of the Hutongs, we were visited by a guy who we were told was a well known Cricketer(!) but turned out to mean the insect – cricket fighting and competitions!  He was absolutely hilarious!  He rushed in, took out lots of boxes and papers, and proceeded to show us this scrapbook of all the papers and magazines he had been in, before showing us his crickets and a couple of grasshoppers.  He departed as suddenly as he had arrived claiming he was a very busy man, and left us all wondering if it had really happened!  Then the owner of the Hutong just continued talking about her house!!

Hutongs

Back on the rickshaw, we went back to the bus, and headed back to the hotel.  Mathew and I went to check in at the airport online, and our only obstacle was that we had to go with collecting our boarding passes at the airport, as apparently only one of the 6 computers in the room was connected to the printer...physically I mean.  I guess printer networking hasn’t arrived here yet...!

The Cricketer (!!)

Anyway, the main thing was that Mathew and I managed to get seats together, and there were plenty of seats to choose from.  We guessed that internet restrictions here might mean that people flying from China may have had less of a chance to book in online, depending on where they were.

All done, we went to our rooms and packed as best as we could.  Dinner time came around and most people had put on their smartest clothes, although it didn’t really matter.  During the mean, there were many toasts, Jane thanked us all for being a brilliant group (of course!) Adrian presented her with 9 red envelopes full of money from us (a secret collection he had organised), and in return, Jane gave us all a CD she had made, of traditional Chinese music played on traditional instruments.

When it was time to leave, many of us exchanged email and postal addresses, and some even invited us to visit if we were in Pembrokeshire, New South Wales or Victoria!  Tomorrow we fly home.  Has it really been almost a month since we landed in Shanghai?